Shot a life coach in Reno, just to watch him re-evaluate personal goals.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Tweet

Though even the oldest among us can see that Facebook represents a marvellous saving on stamps, Twitter emphasises its desirability by being unfathomable to anyone a bit inflexible or busy who is neither a self-promoter nor an exhibitionist. Why would you want to answer the question "What are you doing?" in up to 140 characters? If such questions only betray one's dizzying proximity to the grave, there is also much on Twitter to comfort the mature visitor. The abundance of tweets, even from more dashing contributors, saying things like "about to have breakfast", "too tired", or "Masterchef final was very good" confirms that age has finally surrendered its monopoly on unembarrassed inanity. Indeed, when the first genuinely interesting tweet is posted, as in "looking down at my grey, motionless body", or the simpler "dying", it is likely to come from an older subscriber.

Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist. These are her views, not mine. I link to them because I find them funny. I appreciate that several of you are quite enthusiastic about Twitter. I do not share your fervour but then nor do I watch Battlestar Galactica or take any interest in sport. Each to his/her own. Please do not hit me.

Oh look it's 1988 and we are just in time to see Mr Tony Wilson introduce The Fall:

6 comments:

The abundance of tweets, even from more dashing contributors, saying things like "about to have breakfast", "too tired", or "Masterchef final was very good" confirms that age has finally surrendered its monopoly on unembarrassed inanity.

Oh dear.

Not everything you can read online is intended for you to read, which can be difficult to grasp for someone coming from the old days of print where everything was written for a mass audience.

In ordinary life, we casually chat with our friends about what we had for breakfast, that we're tired, and about the Masterchef final and no one considers that inane. It's casual conversation. It's not supposed to be deep and meaningful.

But somehow when it's on a webpage instead of verbal it becomes inane. Nah, I don't buy that. It's someone from an older generation who can't grasp casual conversation appearing in written form.

Online trends are frequently diagnosed in other media as narcissism, exhibitionism or incipient mental illness, but then so are any number of my interests by members of the wider public and indeed my extended family.

(Of course they are right about the mental illness, but it was never my hobbies that gave that away.)

I don't like to think of myself as a snob & an early adopter wannabe but something about the way everybody is jumping on the twitter bandwagon is making me want to jump to the next thing whatever that may be

I agree with Robyn that twitter is a medium of casual conversation & just like in everyday life there are life and death type moments being recorded there amidst the more general chat e.g Martha twittered during her labour

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"Dandyism is above all the burning need to make oneself an original, contained within the outer limits of propriety. It is a kind of self-worship... It is the pleasure of surprising others and the prideful satisfaction of never being surprised."
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